Lifeboat Foundation

Originally developed nearly a century ago by physicists studying neutron diffusion, Monte Carlo simulations are mathematical models that use random numbers to simulate different kinds of events. As a simple example of how they work, imagine you have a pair of six-sided dice, and you’d like to determine the probability of the dice landing on any given number.

“You take your dice, and you repeat the same exercise of throwing them on the table, and you look at the outcome,” says Susanna Guatelli, associate professor of physics at the University of Wollongong in Australia.

By repeating the dice-throwing experiment and recording the number of times your dice land on each number, you can build a “probability distribution”—a list giving you the likelihood your dice will land on each possible outcome.

Australia-based Q-CTRL has officially announced that it will partner with the Australian military and AUKUS to develop GPS-free navigation using quantum sensors.

Australian quantum technology developer Q-CTRL has now officially partnered with Australia’s Department of Defence (DoD) and, by proxy, AUKUS partners to develop quantum sensors that will deliver quantum-assured navigation capability for military platforms. The program will use Q-CTRL’s “software-ruggedized” quantum sensing technology to enhance positioning and navigation.

Continue reading “Q-CTRL’s quantum navigation uses atom vibration for dead reckoning” »

Experts from CERN, DESY, IBM Quantum and others have published a white paper identifying activities in particle physics that could benefit from the application of quantum-computing technologies.

Last week, researchers published an important white paper identifying activities in particle physics where burgeoning quantum-computing technologies could be applied. The paper, authored by experts from CERN, DESY, IBM Quantum and over 30 other organizations, is now available as a preprint on arXiv.

With quantum-computing technologies rapidly improving, the paper sets out where they could be applied within particle physics in order to help tackle computing challenges related not only to the Large Hadron Collider’s ambitious upgrade program, but also to other colliders and low-energy experiments worldwide.

Over the past decades, physicists and engineers have been trying to develop various technologies that leverage quantum mechanical effects, including quantum microscopes. These are microscopy tools that can be used to study the properties of quantum particles and quantum states in depth.

Researchers at Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC)/UNSW Sydney and the University of Melbourne recently created a new solid-state quantum microscope that could be used to control and examine the wave functions of atomic qubits in silicon. This microscope, introduced in a paper published in Nature Electronics, was created combining two different techniques, known as ion implantation and atomic precision lithography.

“Qubit device operations often rely on shifting and overlapping the qubit wave functions, which relate to the spatial distribution of the electrons at play, so a comprehensive knowledge of the latter provides a unique insight into building quantum circuits efficiently,” Benoit Voisin and Sven Rogge, two researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org.

Footage of thousands of tiny metal spheres set jiggling in a shallow tray has revealed an arrangement of particles once considered impossible.

A team of physicists from the University of Paris-Saclay in France has observed an unusual combination of order and chaos known as a ‘quasicrystal’ emerging spontaneously in a granular material on a millimeter-scale for the first time.

If there is beauty in order, crystals are the very manifestation of elegance and attraction.

AI had its nuclear bomb threshold. The biggest thing that happens to human technology maybe since the splitting of the atom.

A conversation with Science Fiction author and a NASA consultant David Brin about the existential risks of AI and what approach we can take to address these risks.

Continue reading “From Sci-Fi to Reality: Addressing AI Risks — with David Brin” »

For many, the word “crystals” conjures images of shimmering suncatchers that create a prism of rainbow colors or semi-transparent stones thought to possess healing abilities. But in the realm of science and engineering, crystals take on a more technical definition. They’re perceived as materials whose components – be it atoms, molecules, or nanoparticles –are arranged regularly in space. In other words, crystals are defined by the regular arrangement of their constituents. Familiar examples include diamonds, table salt, and sugar cubes.

Magnetic fields are common throughout the universe but incredibly challenging to study. They don’t directly emit or reflect light, and light from all along the electromagnetic spectrum remains the primary purveyor of astrophysical data. Instead, researchers have had to find the equivalent of cosmic iron filings—matter in galaxies that is sensitive to magnetic fields and also emits light marked by the fields’ structure and intensity.

In a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal, several Stanford astrophysicists have studied infrared signals from just such a material—magnetically aligned dust grains embedded in the cold, dense clouds of star-forming regions. A comparison to light from cosmic ray electrons that has been marked by magnetic fields in warmer, more diffuse material showed surprising differences in the measured magnetic fields of galaxies.

Stanford astrophysicist and member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Acceleration and Cosmology (KIPAC) Enrique Lopez-Rodriguez explains the differences and what they could mean for galactic growth and evolution.

Theoretical physicists have a lot in common with lawyers. Both spend a lot of time looking for loopholes and inconsistencies in the rules that might be exploited somehow.

Valeri P. Frolov and Andrei Zelnikov from the University of Alberta in Canada and Pavel Krtouš from Charles University in Prague probably couldn’t get you out of a traffic fine, but they may have uncovered enough wiggle room in the laws of physics to send you back in time to make sure you didn’t speed through that school zone in the first place.

Shortcuts through spacetime known as wormholes aren’t recognized features of the cosmos. But for the better part of a century, scientists have wondered if the weft and warp instructed by relativity prescribe ways for quantum ripples – or even entire particles – to break free of their locality.